True story. When I was back in grade school, there was always this same girl, who always posed the same, sometimes frightening, question. “But what if the US didn’t win the American Revolution?” “What if we didn’t defeat Hitler?” and so forth.
Also, when I got older, I heard of the Quantum theory of alternate realities. Whatever can happen, apparently does, in an alternate reality, at least according to quantum physicists.
Anyways, much like this little girl, I have many scenarios, I hash over again and again in my mind, with regards to history. But I will throw just one out there for you all: What if Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated? We still won the Civil War. And presumably the slaves were still freed, etc. But Lincoln never got the bullet. What would be different today, if that were the case?
And let my start the discussion by just throwing a couple of things out there. Some people think that President Lincoln was heaven-sent. Our country would never have endured those hard times without him. But what about AFTER the Civil War? You know, Lincoln was in favor of full reconciliation with the South. “With malice towards none, and charity to all” he said. But was that such a good thing really? I think the South kind of needed a little tough love, in my opinion at least. Without the tough love approach that followed his demise, who knows what may be different. Maybe, for example, we would never have had the Civil Rights Era of the 1950’s and 60’s. You have to do a lot of thinking to figure out how Lincoln’s averted assassination would have led to that, and I won’t bore you with it all. But it could happen.
What do the rest of you think? What would be different if Pres. Lincoln was never assassinated?
He might have steered a moderate course, walking the tightrope between punishing the south and allowing the south to oppress blacks. He probably wouldn’t have encouraged large-scale carpetbagging.
He might not have ramrodded the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. He might have worked out some sort of compromise with the governors of the southern states.
I believe he would have tried, completely heroically, to be as accommodating to all as anyone possibly could. I fear he might have erred too far on the side of lassez-faire, allowing the southern states to get away with (literally) murder. But he wouldn’t have made the mistakes that Johnson and Grant made.
History being what it is, it’s likely that his legacy would be tarnished by vacillation and compromise. (If John F. Kennedy had lived, the same thing is likely true: there would have been an onset of mediocrity.)
Not being martyred he would not become a saint for the Civil Religion, and instead be highly regarded as a great war-leader but just another president. Not to be forgot, but not to be adored.
This would have a severe knock-on effect on the doctoral theses of American historians.
He would have gotten into a knockdown fight with Congress over control of Reconstruction, which was already shaping up when he died. He probably would have been more successful about it than Johnson, but the plan he was pushing was called the “ten percent plan” or the “Louisiana plan.”
Basically, it was…
Amnesty for those who took a loyalty oath.
Restoration of civil government once 10% of the population took the oath.
Former slaves on plantations to be required to stay there for at least a year.
No confiscation of land or private property by the government.
Old Georgie didn’t free his slaves when alive, but directed the Widow Washington to let my people go on her own death ( technical difficulties stopped her from being able to free her own slaves; plus they were money in the bank ). She soon realised that with the prospect of freedom on her death some of the slaves were eyeing her funny.
It was somewhat before my time, but I’m under the impression that it wasn’t Johnson who threw the former slaves under the bus but Rutherford Hayes a few years later. Johnson supported reconstruction but not scorched-earth punishment for white confederate southerners.
Lincoln personally opposed slavery. He had been willing to compromise on the issue before the war to try to keep the country together and then to keep the war effort going. But by 1865 I feel he had come to see slavery as something that was causing political problems as well as being immoral. He wanted to excise it not preserve it under new legal cover.
That said, Lincoln was never vindictive. He wanted abolish slavery but he didn’t feel any need to punish the people who had supported slavery.
So I think Lincoln’s plan would have been to abolish slavery, including the de facto slavery that was enacted after the war. He would have opposed anti-black terrorism. And he would have enforced the spirit of the 14th Amendment by defending equal legal rights for blacks. But he wouldn’t have sought to confiscate property (other than slaves), disenfranchise white voters, or hold war trials. He would have essentially tried to skip over the next hundred years and put black people where they would be in the nineteen-sixties.
I think it was possible. Lincoln was a skillful politician and he had build up a storehouse of personal prestige during the war.
Johnson essentially wanted to transfer power from rich white southerners to poor white southerners. He did not want black southerners to have any political power.
No one would remember the play Our American Cousin, and John Wilkes Booth, if he were remembered at all, would be thought of as the less successful brother of Edwin.
It is difficult to envision how Lincoln would not have been a better President than Andrew Johnson was, and his legend was effectively already written by the time he died; everything else would have been icing. Reconstruction, which was not the horrible imposition on the South the apologists would have you believe, would have been more quickly and effectively implemented. I’ve no doubt at all he’d be revered today.
Without the 22nd Amendment, he’d still be President. In fact there’d be no other Presidents between 1865 and now. WWI might be the same, but he would have quashed Hitler in 1936, put man on the moon in 1952, eliminated hate and brought an unending peace and prosperity to all mankind!
The OP’s question caused me to think it wasn’t specific enough. I think that whether or not an assassination attempt was made would have made a difference what happened after April 15th, 1865.
Lincoln was superior to Johnson as a statesman, as a leader, as a strategist, and in his compassion for African Americans. Johnson was a southerner and a former slave owner who repeatedly opposed granting equal rights to African Americans. There is no question in my mind that Lincoln would have been a superior president and would have more effectively guided America through the difficulties of Reconstruction.
However, history and the American government are larger than any one individual, and history managed to progress despite Johnson. Congress impeached him (but failed by one vote to convict) and overrode his veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. In the long-run, I do not think that Lincoln surviving would have had the sort of far-reaching effects on history that your other hypothetical scenarios (US losing the Revolutionary War; Hitler winning WWII) would have had. IMHO.
What is the scenario that you envision in which the Civil Rights Era would not have been necessary?
Lincoln’s legacy would tarnished with scandal. From his imprisonment of thousands of dissidents, his arrest of a member of congress, and his consideration of the arrest of Justice Taney, to his crony railroad deals, support of the Illinois Black Codes and Corwin amendment, and refusal to negotiate a peaceful secession, Lincoln was a pretty rotten guy. Not a guy you’d build a temple to for tourists to warble hosannas at his feet.
Will Farnaby, that its the worst kind of cherry-picking revisionist nonsense, and while I’d like to argue against it point by point, I’m also on the thin of edge of enraged. This is exactly the kind of bad history I loathe, because you’re deliberately taking anything someone did or had to do under difficult circumstances (like, for example, the entire country being torn in half) and judging them while snug in a safe little cocoon of modernity.
Also, it’s a bad idea to criticize someone for racism and also for doing something about it.
Edit: Also, also, “crony railroad deals”? I’ve looked up quite a bit of history, and still can’t figure out what you mean here.
